Advancing Cultures of Innovation

Learning: Blended? Online? Face to Face? – The importance of pedagogy before technology in a digital landscape

25 April, 2019 By Lauren Sayer Leave a Comment

Many schools are introducing or improving their online offerings in the K-12 education space. Whilst online and blended programs have been the norm for a significant amount of time in the tertiary sector we are playing catch up in terms of supporting our students to access learning anywhere anytime in the K-12 school environment.

Technology, like educational theories, continually evolve with time. This evolution creates opportunities for improvement in classroom practice for the betterment of the students in our care.

One such opportunity is online learning. An online learning approach allows students to access learning resources in an online environment and while this approach has some benefits for Haileybury students, it lacks one key feature; regular face to face interactions with an experienced teacher.

A blended learning approach combines tradition face to face teaching and learning with the directed use of online resources. Blended learning describes a learning environment that uses a range of learning activities and resources to enable the students to achieve their academic potential.[i]

Features of a blended learning environment include, but are not limited to, face to face teaching, pencil and paper, hands on materials, individual activities, group work and online resources and activities and resources. When a teacher combines these approaches, they are utilising blended learning with their students. It does not mean that effective teaching practice should be ignored in favour of moving students to an online environment if it is not appropriate.

As a blended learning approach can be make use of a variety approaches it is important to note that it is not a one size fits all model. An institution will need to decide what features they wish to incorporate into their approach.

So where do you start defining what blended learning means for your institution?

The golden rule with this is to start with the user not with the technology! Far too often when looking at technology we start with the tool instead of the user and the intended outcome. If we start with the technology what we end up with is digitising education and learning instead of what we want to achieve which is the digitalisation of education and learning with view to a digital transformation of education and learning.

However what is the difference between digitisation, digitalisation and digital transformation?

In moving between these areas there are many models we can use to frame this up such as SAMR Model, Florida Technology Integration Matrix, and the TPACK model however it is imperative that we work with the students/users to ensure that we get honest feedback as to where we currently are along our digital pathway as a school.

I suggest the best place to start along this pathway is to shadow your students for a week. During that week write down every time they interact with traditional and digital learning materials and note down how they interact with these. This will begin to give a strong picture as to where your currently are and what the opportunities are at the different levels of digitisation, digitalisation and digital transformation. I have included below and example of a shadowing exercise I did a few years ago.

Once we shadowed and interviewed our users we found that there was quite a lot of digitisation and not a large amount of digitalisation or digital transformation. What was plainly obvious was the opportunity to link many of the digitised processes that we in place into one platform that enabled productivity and the user experience for students to be a lot cleaner and simplified.

This led us down the path of setting goals for our learning management system in conjunction with our users. The biggest aspiration was that the platform was much more than a dropbox of files where students could access digitised handouts in one place. We wanted the platform to a place where students could engage with learning whilst collaborating and communicating with each other and their teachers in a safe environment.

So once we had a vision we needed to build it… However we knew that whilst Kevin Costner truly believed that

“if you build it they will come”

this is not always the case with technology adoption.

We needed to ensure we designed with our students and teachers not for our students and teachers.

Design sessions were held with students and teachers and templates were made for each department based on their student and teacher needs. What was clear from these design sessions was that students like a cohesive clear user experience. Students wanted to know where to get resources easily and they wanted to see their teachers in educational resources.

What became very apparent was that students and teachers wanted their online space to be a social utility. Our students knew that the internet is full of great “stuff” but they wanted resources to be curated to them.

In relatable terms this meant that we had to create the Michelin Guide for learning to our students. In 1920 Michelin offered a guide that gave users the best restaurants and hotels on a given pathway. In 2019 we had to do the same for learning with our students.

So we began the journey of working in teams to design this. This meant mapping out what the learning experience looked like for each learning objective not just in a face to face model but in a blended model as well. It involved the digital transformation of mindset to define learning as something that happens beyond face to face four walls model and into a anywhere anytime model.

In my next blog post I will write further about what we created and collated and the importance of clever curation and strong creation of resources by all users, students and teachers.

Please join me at the Leading a Digital School Conference where I will present a Keynote on this subject.

[i] https://www.education.vic.gov.au/documents/about/research/blendedlearning.pdf

Teaching skills for an unpredictable future

31 March, 2019 By Margo Metcalf Leave a Comment

written by Adrian Camm

Globalisation and the accelerating rate of technological development provide new and unparalleled opportunities for the evolution of our species. Children entering primary school in 2019 will be young adults in 2030. What will the world look like? What career pathways will be available to them?

Experts argue that the world of 2030 will be shaped by advancements in Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, Synthetic Biology, Biotechnology and the field of Big Data, particularly as the appliances and accessories that we wear and have in our homes gain greater tracking, storage and analytical power through the ubiquity and accessibility of next generation internet services. Automation is already forcing many industries to rethink traditional blue collar professions. The jobs that were once human endeavours are quickly changing as some jobs become obsolete and new jobs are invented.

As Artificial Intelligence applications become increasingly sophisticated, we are seeing glimpses of the inevitability that one day in the not too distant future, machines will exceed our abilities in many, many areas. Intelligent algorithms have even started to exhibit traits like creativity, traits that we once thought would solely exist in the human domain. Even the way we interact with others has changed dramatically. Everything and everyone has at once become more connected through social media and yet more isolated, as “screen time” takes away from much of our face to face communications.

The young people graduating from schools in 2030 will face some of the world’s most pressing and intractable problems: The political, environmental, economic and societal implications of global warming and climate change, the ethics and morality of our ability to genetically modify our unborn children, an increasing and ageing population that has come about through advances in medicine and increased life expectancy, dwindling natural resources and the merging and augmentation of human intelligence through the use of technology and pharmaceuticals. The call for schools to adequately prepare students for an uncertain future can be seen throughout the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s under the guise of school reform and the risk of irrelevance. Whilst the argument today largely remains the same, we have never before been in the grips of such rapid technological development. Change is now the one known against the multitude of unknowns.

Schools play a critical role in shaping the competencies and capabilities of young people in their care. There has always been debate about the kind of skills people will need to thrive in the future. An in-depth knowledge, skillset and expertise of a particular specialization is still absolutely important, but increasingly major discoveries are happening at the interstices between disciplines and this requires depth in a specific field but also an ability and the capability to see and make connections more broadly.

Schools need to create the conditions for students to develop a disposition toward learning. These conditions must not stymie or stifle curiosity, should free children’s imaginations and enable them to be resilient in the face of adversity. The role of the teacher will still be to teach, but also to model, mentor, facilitate and assist in the development of character and emotional intelligence. Students will need help in developing a certain comfort with being uncomfortable. They will need to be put into situations where they have to make decisions in order to become skilled at making good decisions. They will need to learn how to navigate the multitude of new technologies at their disposal in safe, effective and ethical ways. If schools tailor their approach to develop students who have a sense of agency, then a variety of teaching and learning approaches must be used that are experiential, project-based and interspersed with purposeful periods of direct instruction. By creating these conditions, students will be equipped with the dispositions, tools and networks to embrace any possible future.

So, is it possible to teach skills for an unpredictable future? Yes. A breadth and depth of knowledge can be gained through a combination of explicit and implicit teaching and via opportunities for students to grapple with complex problems through inquiry. Through community service programs and local and overseas expeditions, students develop an understanding of their place in the world and how they can be leaders, giving back to others and contributing as active, productive and informed citizens. Through a focus on emotional intelligence, students learn how to recognize and regulate their emotions and how to see situations from the perspective of others. Skills like creativity, communication and critical thinking are developed in a number of ways through the experiences teachers develop for young people.

What does this look like in schools? How can this be operationalized? What are some specific examples?

Come and meet me at the Leading a Digital School Conference where I will present a Keynote and two Workshops.

See you at the conference on Thursday 8^th August, 2019!

Adrian Camm.

Over the edge…transforming teachers with mind-body PL

27 March, 2019 By Hilary Purdie 2 Comments

“Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.”

Christopher Logue – New Numbers

A new era

More than ever before we are asking teachers to step out of their comfort zones. 20 years ago, most PL meant tweaking existing practices in known content areas. A chalk and talk session where teachers could sit and listen, and take notes on new ideas was a perfectly appropriate and effective forum. Soon, the buzz of collaborative teams began to infiltrate PL, and the power of teacher voice meant we could learn from each other, not just the sage on the stage. In reality though, pedagogies and content areas in PL still sat neatly within the paradigms of teachers’ own educational experiences as a student.

With the ubiquitous nature of digital technologies in our students’ lives, we are, in a comparatively short time frame, asking teachers to make monumental shifts into areas that appear quite foreign.

Let the students lead the learning What?!
Integrate digital technologies Sorry, I’m just not good with all this techy stuff…
Move from the safety of the classroom into authentic real world learning But I won’t be able to cover the curriculum!

Like an abseil, these big conceptual leaps about how teachers perceive their role in a school often evoke fear and anxiety, resulting in either active resistance or passive avoidance.

PL that acknowledges fear and uncertainty as legitimate starting points, that embraces risk, and guides and celebrates learning through vulnerability.

It is clear that leaders who are committed to advancing cultures of innovation need to be intentional in providing PL that addresses not only content and pedagogies, but also supports teachers’ emotional growth. PL that acknowledges fear and uncertainty as legitimate starting points, that embraces risk, and guides and celebrates learning through vulnerability.

A fresh lens

In the past 18 months, I have sat through too many PL sessions (sat being the operative word) about emotional connection to learning, student centred learning, active and inquiry based approaches and found that 50 minutes in we are all still sitting in our chairs, digesting a PowerPoint of words, without having had an opportunity to share, experience, reflect or challenge our assumptions with our peers.

Let’s add a fresh lens to PL. A lens that is unashamedly intentional about modelling the very ways in which we are wanting students to learn.

A time for doing

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn” Benjamin Franklin

We know learners need to do. We know learners need multiple avenues to explore new ideas and connect to existing knowledge. It may be do first, reflect later. It may be think first, do later. It may be thinking and doing concurrently. Irrespective of the order, for something to become deeply understood, a learner must have the opportunity to engage in the body-mind connection, and develop meta-cognitive awareness about their own learning experiences. Mindset alone is not enough. Teachers need to know their competencies in teaching in a new and exciting way.

Last year I took my 14 year old daughter climbing on the Organ Pipes – large dolorite cliffs over 120 metres tall, on the eastern face of Mt Wellington.

After climbing two 30 metre pitches, she looked down and was hit by the reality of the 50 metre rockface we had to abseil. I’d told her about it, so it was in her mindset before we started the day “yes, I’m going to abseil down that cliff”. Sitting on top of the cliff, knowing it was the only way down she frantically sought both active and passive avoidance “I’ll pay for a helicopter” or “I’ll just sleep up here”.

Talking about abseiling and actually leaning backwards over the edge are two completely different things. In theory you can know that it will be safe but scary. Experiencing abseiling is completely different. Heart racing, palms sweating, legs shaking, the internal dialogue of the mind “I’m gonna die!”. The complex emotions involved in knowing these feelings of uncomfortableness, of fear, and feeling out of control, YET pursuing it anyway, and the subsequent elation and pride are things that can only be felt and experienced, not taught.

Teaching in scary territory

We are asking teachers to take a leap into scary territory.

If a teacher hasn’t recently experienced learning in an experiential, inquiry based way, how can they possibly trust that the chaos that they see in front of their eyes will in fact lead to deeper learning? The confusion, frustrations of problem solving with technology, heated discussions, multiple dead ends that they see their students go through as they try to navigate complex learning may well turn a teacher off rethinking the ways in which they teach. But having experienced and reflected on learning like this themselves in PL, teachers will recognise that their students are not only learning about content, but about learning itself, and specifically, about their personal capabilities as a learner.

teachers and students are learning about their personal capabilities as a learner

Are we, as leaders, empowering, trusting and supporting teachers to work through challenging emotions in order to grow themselves firstly as learners, and then as teachers? PL needs to be carefully planned so that the risk is calculated, and perceived risk only. In the same way I wouldn’t send my daughter off a 50m cliff with a 30 metre rope or a frayed harness, leaders need to make sure teachers are provided with the right tools and guidance to ensure their own, and consequently their students’, success.

Our Leadership Challenge

The challenge in encouraging teachers to integrate Digital Technologies into teaching is not addressing the question “is this possible?” coz we see it around us all the time, on every innovate teacher’s YouTube channel, Tweet or Facebook feed – of course it’s possible! At the heart of Digital Technologies PL in regular schools with regular educators is getting teachers to answer “can I do this?” And the answer is undoubtedly yes – if equipped with the right resources, mindset and competencies, and the FEELING of having moved through the unknown and the challenge themselves.

As leaders, if we allow teachers to take the helicopter and neverexperience and reflect on the feelings associated with learning in a risky way, it is unfair to expect huge shifts in practice. We can’t impose our redefinition of the role of educators without firstly guiding teachers to understand their own competencies in teaching in a new and exciting way.

Plan to Pump PL:

Be clear about intended emotional outcomes of the PL. Is it to generate enthusiasm, build teams, push into new areas, challenge assumptions, consolidate understanding?
Guide learners to make body-mind connection (meta-cognition)
Include reflection time to connect teachers’ own learning experiences to student learning
Be transparent about the intentional structuring of the PL
Plan appropriate scaffolds to ensure success

I am presenting at the Leading a Digital School Conference in August in Melbourne and would love to see you there. One of my sessions is under the Mega Theme of Advancing Cultures of Innovation and the Sub Theme of Rethinking the Role of Teachers.

Session: Pump your PL

Why mindset alone is not enough for teacher transformation – a practical workshop on how to use digital tools to pump teacher PL. More than just novelty, each of these strategies models intentional pedagogies that has teachers firstly ‘doing’, then reflecting on their own engagement as a learner in order to transfer progressive learning experiences for their students. Flipped learning using AR, peardeck, 365, secret pedagogy missions, solving complex problems, flipgrid, mission impossible, YouTube, Padlet, virtual wellbeing gallery. Feedback from teachers – this is PL that sticks and initiates action…in fact it was named up in school data as positively contributing to teacher wellbeing!

Promoting engagement and more importantly retention of girls in STEM

17 February, 2019 By Sarah Chapman Leave a Comment

To reshape and better up skill the future workforce, the focus must begin with education, as “STEM education underpins innovation and plays a critical role in economic and business growth” (PwC, 2015). Further, education in STEM is recommended as being the key to broadening community understandings of what STEM is saying and doing about the complex problems facing society, now and in the future (Office of the Chief Scientist, 2013).

Young people need to be digitally competent, adaptable and adopt core competencies that will enable them to respond to the ever-changing workforce (CEDA, 2015). STEM is a key driver of innovation and entrepreneurship that can significantly impact on the economy (PwC, 2015) and 21^st century skills are recognised as a key component within a STEM skills set that enable young people to achieve success in our evolving workforce (World Economic Forum, 2016).

Increasing the engagement of young people in STEM will enable the building of aspirations for a lifelong journey in STEM. There are currently inequities that exist in STEM in Australia. Girls, students from low socio-economic status backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and students from non-metropolitan areas are currently less likely to engage in STEM education and are at higher risk of not developing high capabilities in STEM-related skills (Education Council, 2015). As a result, these groups are more likely to miss out on the opportunities STEM-related occupations can offer.

To increase our STEM workforce, a priority needs to be made to harness the STEM talents within these groups. Currently, only 16% of STEM qualified people in Australia are female (Office of the Chief Scientist, 2016). Besides there being the requirement for equity in the workforce in terms of pay and career progression for women (Prinsley, et.al., 2016), a significant priority needs to made to promote the engagement and retention of underrepresented groups in STEM.

Practical insights for implementing STEM programs: targeting girls

There are a diverse range of barriers and drivers that inhibit or enhance the engagement and retainment of girls in STEM-related pathways. The drivers often vary depending on the barriers that arise. The diversity of these barriers vary from country to country and for girls of different backgrounds. This issue deserves dedicated research to be completed within the Australian context to best identify the specific barriers that exist for girls in this country, and the key drivers for engaging Australian girls. Through the Fellowship research, observations were made around the key challenges and strategies required to engage girls from the perspective of the organisations visited in different countries.

Challenges/Barriers observed for girls engaging with STEM

The fear of failure and lack of confidence of young girls in STEM
The lack of relevance to everyday life, STEM being an abstract construct
Lack of links to the ‘humanness’ around STEM
Parents/Caregivers lack of understanding and therefore lack of support towards STEM pathways
Misconceptions and stereotypes perceptions around STEM industries and professions
Lack of funds to access opportunities for disadvantaged girls
Lack of role models in STEM industries and post-secondary education, particularly in leadership positions
Challenges around the culture of STEM industries and support for women to thrive
Lack of clarity on STEM careers (including job titles) and professional activities.

Messaging: Effective messaging can attract girls to consider STEM and help girls to envision themselves as STEM professionals, as well as help to support their key influencers. This includes the consideration of effective messaging strategies from marketing to role model interactions.

Key tips for effective messaging:

Use adjectives to describe and characterise STEM professional roles and activities.
Have role models and volunteers share their interests and activities outside of their STEM-related activities.
Develop resources for individual STEM fields for targeted messaging and information.
Evaluate STEM program and organisation media for unconscious bias, and ensure diverse representation in media.

Girls-only opportunities: Offering girls-only experiences and learning spaces provides the opportunity for girls to be empowered and feel comfortable to question, experiment and lead in STEM. By structuring these safe environments girls are more willing to try and experiment with STEM.

Key tips to design positive girls-only opportunities and spaces:

Provide a comfortable and safe learning environment.
Create a gender-neutral environment, free of “STEM stereotypes”.
Provide opportunities for girls to connect with female mentors in STEM.
Ensure the environment supports girls to try, play and fail without judgement.

Family involvement: The involvement of family, especially parents, in STEM learning experiences is invaluable in providing support for girls engaging in STEM experiences. Parents are role models and key influencers of a girl’s career pathway considerations. Involving family in STEM, not only enriches a girl’s experiences, it also connects STEM into the home.

Key tips to promote family involvement:

Host orientation and family evenings that family members can be involved in.
Provide updates for family members on achievements and opportunities Authentic connections: Connecting with real world experiences that make an impact and diverse female experts for support and inspiration, can provide girls with authentic STEM connections and opportunities that promote sustained engagement.

Authentic Connections: Connecting young people with real world experiences that make an impact and diverse female experts for support and inspiration, can provide girls with authentic STEM connections and opportunities that promote sustained engagement.

Key tips to enable girls to build authentic connections:

Industry visits and experiences.
STEM projects that solve compelling problems, with real life contexts for ‘social good’.
Mentorship programs where girls link with diverse female STEM experts.

This blog includes excerpts from Engaging the Future of STEM. Authors: Ms Sarah Chapman & Dr Rebecca Vivian. A study of international best practice for promoting the participation of young people, particularly girls, in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). This research was conducted as part of the 2016 Barbara Cail STEM Fellowship and funded by the Australian Government (Office for Women, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet), in partnership with the Chief Executive Women (CEW) Ltd.

Come and meet me at the Leading a Digital School Conference where I will be providing authentic international and national examples that exemplify the promotion of engagement and retention of girls in STEM.

For reference list please refer to: Engaging the Future of STEM

Innovation and Creativity…IMO

21 November, 2018 By Matt Zarb and Jon Roberts Leave a Comment

I don’t know about you, but I have seen this before. I have been this before. It’s an easy trap to fall into. You unwrap the bright and shiny new ‘thing’ that will transform your classroom. The solution to a problem we never knew we had. And the gateway to a whole range of new and exciting problems that didn’t exist before but now do. If only it did what we wanted it to do or even delivered some of the expected outcomes?!

Design has many names. Many ruses. So many different acronyms. At its heart, though, it seeks to do the same thing, whatever the label. Design is about solving problems. It is about solutions. Testing solutions. Improving solutions. “Design is the link between innovation and creativity, taking thoughts and exploring the possibilities and constraints associated with products or systems, allowing designers to redefine and manage the generation of further thought through prototyping, experimentation and adaptation. It is human-centred and focuses on the needs, wants and limitations of the end user.” (IB Design Guide 2015, p. 4) Once we scratch below the surface and take away the shiny things, Design is problem solving methodology and technology is useful, only if it too, solves a problem.

“Why?” before “What?” If I had a mantra, it would be this. ‘Why’ am I doing this has to come before the ‘what’ do I need to make it happen. I cannot solve a problem without knowing what I am trying to solve.

I see Innovation as the output of creativity. The product of creativity. If creativity is the noun…then the act of this creativity finds its place through innovative thinking and doing. At times we blame lack of resources on our ability to innovate when in fact it’s the constraints that inspire innovation. It is not about what I have, but what I do not have that inspires innovation. And this drives our learning. To be innovative sometimes we need to limit what we have, what we get and what we give. We challenge our students to think. When you break that down. Challenging students to think shouldn’t be outside the realms of what we do, but it often is. And here is the response.

The five cogs of innovation

“Tell me how to do it?” is the cry of the student who is stuck.

“Well I could. Or you could just try something different. Have a go at solving the problem yourself. It doesn’t matter if you get it wrong. You just need to attempt something different to what you have already done.”

And at times they do. While others will not even budge. Fear of getting it wrong has been smashed into them so many times that the thought of not getting it right the first time overrides any natural curiosity. Some students would prefer getting in trouble for not trying, not even attempting to get it right, because its beats the shame of getting it wrong. And that says something about our schools. Our system.

Something needs to change.

Innovation as a classroom subject pushes our students to think they can, rather than believe they cannot and then asks them to attempt things they may not have otherwise tried to do. And the results are things we could not have imagined. Every class is different. New leaders emerge. Students in control of what they learn and how they learn. Our dream is students develop a mindset that they will attempt anything. No matter what they have been told in the past and no matter what others might think they can do. It’s the mindset I want our Design teachers to have. To take risks. To be different. To try something outrageous. And who knows what might happen?

Looking forward to talking more about this at the Leading a Digital School Conference….. And moving forward together.

Matt Zarb

Reference: